Knowledge about investment and corporations is increasingly becoming necessary in order to adequately financially plan for one""s future. Nonetheless, many people find learning about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other securities and investment vehicles intimidating. Accordingly, many games about the stock market have been developed to help lower barriers to learning about investing. But many of these games fall short: they are far too complicated, they are not engaging, and while they demonstrate how to buy and sell stocks, they fail to teach how to allocate an investment portfolio and fail to teach about the business world as a whole.
Accordingly, disclosed herein in accordance with an embodiment of the invention is an engaging game that also teaches its players about buying and selling securities, investment strategies (including asset allocation goals for age groups in some embodiments), and the business world.
In particular a financial game in accordance with one embodiment of the invention includes a board having a closed loop path including a plurality of spaces. Each space represents a single playing piece step. Some of the spaces are subdivided into subspaces. In one embodiment, some spaces are divided into at least two subspaces: an up subspace and a down subspace. The up and down subspaces generally each specify a respective type of security that is eligible for purchase or sale when a playing piece is placed on that subspace.
A game in accordance with another embodiment of the invention further includes a number of portfolio asset allocation cards. Each respective portfolio asset allocation card specifies a portfolio of securities for a particular investment strategy. In order to win the game in one embodiment, a player must accumulate the securities and cash specified on that player""s portfolio asset allocation card.
In some embodiments a third subspace is included in some of the subdivided spaces, which specifies that a question is to be answered in a particular question category when a playing piece is placed on that subspace. In addition, the game includes a plurality of question cards to be used when a playing piece is placed on such a third subspace.
Finally, a game in accordance with still another embodiment of the invention includes a pair of dice or other move indicator, wherein the first die represents a number indicative of the number of spaces a playing piece is required to advance when the player rolls that die. The second die includes a representation of the subspace in which the playing piece is to be placed once the playing piece has advanced the number of spaces designated by the first die.
In addition, in some embodiments of the invention, there are also securities certificates representative of securities that players will buy and sell. As well, there is play money that is distributed to the players. Finally, there are additional spaces in some embodiments of the invention for special actions, including Quarterly reviews, the Federal Reserve, Inflation, and Roll Again.